The degradation of astronomical images caused by atmospheric turbulence will be much more severe in the next generation of terrestrial telescopes and its compensation will require deformable mirrors with up to tens-of-thousands of actuators. Current designs for these correctors consist of scaling up the proven technologies of flexible optical plates deformed under the out-of-plane action of linear actuators. This approach will lead to an exponential growth of cost with the number of actuators, and in very complex mechanisms. This thesis proposes a new concept of optical correction which is modular, robust, lightweight and low-cost and is based on the bimorph in-plane actuation. The adaptive mirror consists of segmented identical hexagonal bimorph mirrors allowing to indefinitely increase the degree of correction while maintaining the first mechanical resonance at the level of a single segment and showing an increase in price only proportional to the number of segments. Each bimorph segment can be mass-produced by simply screen-printing an array of thin piezoelectric patches onto a silicon wafer resulting in very compact and lightweight modules and at a price essentially independent from the number of actuators. The controlled deformation of a screen-printed bimorph mirror was experimentally achieved with meaningful optical shapes and appropriate amplitudes; its capability for compensating turbulence was evaluated numerically. The generation of continuous surfaces by an assembly of these mirrors was numerically simulated and a demonstrator of concept consisting of 3 segments was constructed.

Future generations of space-based telescopes will require increasingly large primary reflectors, with very tight optical-quality tolerances. However, as their size grow, it becomes more and more difficult to meet the requirements, due to the manufacturing complexity and the associated costs. Chapters 2 and 3 propose two concepts of Adaptive Optics deformable mirrors, intended to be used as secondary corrector to compensate for manufacturing errors, gravity release and thermal distortion of large lightweight primary mirrors of space telescopes: (i) A scalable segmented bimorph mirror, based on independent PZT patches glued on Silicon wafers, providing a large number of degrees of freedom, a low mass while overcoming the problem of a low resonance mode; and (ii) A monolithic bimorph mirror, controlled by an array of independent electrodes, done by laser ablation on a single PZT patch. The modelling, the control strategy and the technological aspects are described. The performances of the manufactured prototypes are demonstrated experimentally. These prototypes have been developed in the framework of the ESA project, Bimorph Adaptive Large Optical Mirror Demonstrator (BIALOM). Chapter 4 introduces alternative designs, allowing to face the thermal distortion inherent to the bimorph architecture. They are compared in terms of stroke, voltage budget and first resonance frequency. These designs are required to be controlled in both directions using only positive voltages. Finally, the last chapter explores the feasibility of the shape control of a small size active thin shell reflector (with double curvature). The prototype is intended to be a technology demonstrator of a future large and very light active primary reflector. The behavior of the shell is studied through numerical simulations, and a preliminary design is proposed. This investigation is carried out in the framework of the ESA project: Multilayer Adaptive Thin Shell Reflectors (MATS). / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur et technologie / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

The degradation of astronomical images caused by atmospheric turbulence will be much more severe in the next generation of terrestrial telescopes and its compensation will require deformable mirrors with up to tens-of-thousands of actuators.<p>Current designs for these correctors consist of scaling up the proven technologies of flexible optical plates deformed under the out-of-plane action of linear actuators. This approach will lead to an exponential growth of cost with the number of actuators, and in very complex mechanisms.<p><p>This thesis proposes a new concept of optical correction which is modular, robust, lightweight and low-cost and is based on the bimorph in-plane actuation.<p><p>The adaptive mirror consists of segmented identical hexagonal bimorph mirrors allowing to indefinitely increase the degree of correction while maintaining the first mechanical resonance at the level of a single segment and showing an increase in price only proportional to the number of segments.<p><p>Each bimorph segment can be mass-produced by simply screen-printing an array of thin piezoelectric patches onto a silicon wafer resulting in very compact and lightweight modules<p>and at a price essentially independent from the number of actuators.<p><p>The controlled deformation of a screen-printed bimorph mirror was experimentally achieved with meaningful optical shapes and appropriate amplitudes; its capability for compensating turbulence was evaluated numerically. The generation of continuous surfaces<p>by an assembly of these mirrors was numerically simulated and a demonstrator of concept consisting of 3 segments was constructed. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished